'I can't see your face': Dame Judi Dench going blind

But the 77-year-old actress, who is filming the latest Bond instalment Skyfall with Daniel Craig, says she has no plans to retire over her ailment.

"As long as there is a possibility of working I'm not going to retire because if I retire nothing will work any more and it's hard enough as it is," she told the Daily Mirror.

"I can't see your face," she told the tabloid's journalist during the interview, despite sitting directly in front of her.

Dench is suffering from a condition called macular degeneration, which leads to blindness and means she has to have movie scripts read to her "like a story".

"I can't read scripts anymore because of the trouble with my eyes," she said.

"Somebody comes in and reads them to me, like telling me a story. It's usually my daughter or my agent or a friend and actually I like that, because I sit there and imagine the story in my mind."

She said the worst thing about it was not being able to read menus while dining out.

"The most distressing thing is in a restaurant in the evening I can't see the person I'm having dinner with ... I know there might be something going on but sometimes I can't see it and that infuriates me as I think I'm really missing out on something."

Dench said she was having injections and wearing special glasses to combat the disease.

She won an Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love but is most famous for playing MI5 boss M in the Bond films.